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Best Famous Family Tree Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Family Tree poems. This is a select list of the best famous Family Tree poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Family Tree poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of family tree poems.

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Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

from Proverbs of Hell

 (a) radical

ban all fires
and places where people congregate
to create comfort
put an end to sleep
good cooking
and the delectation of wine
tear lovers apart
piss on the sun and moon
degut all heavenly harmony
strike out across the bitter ice
and the poisonous marshes

make (if you dare) a better world

(b) expect poison from standing water
  (iii)
lake erie
why not as a joke one night
pick up your bed and walk
to washington – sleep
your damned sleep in its streets
so that one bright metallic morning
it can wake up to the stench
and fermentation of flesh
the gutrot of nerves – the blood’s
green effervescence so active
your skin has a job to keep it all in

isn’t that what things with the palsy
are supposed to do – lovely lake
give the world the miracle it waits for
what a laugh that would be

especially if washington lost its temper
and screamed christ lake erie
i don’t even know what to do
with my own garbage

pollution is just one of those things

go on lake erie
do it tonight

(c) drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead

(i)
isn't the next one
easter egg

  i don't want to live any more in an old way

yes it is

  to be a socialist wearing capitalism's cap
  a teacher in the shadow of a dead headmaster
  a tree using somebody else's old sap

  i want to build my future out of new emotions
  to seek more than my own in a spring surround
  to move amongst people keen to move outwards
  putting love and ideas into fresh ground

  who will come with me across this border
  not anywhere but in the bonds we make
  taking the old apart to find new order
  living ourselves boldly for each other's sake

then love is

  if you ask me today what love is
  i should have to name the people i love
  and perhaps because it's spring
  and i cannot control the knife that's in me
  their names would surprise me as much as you

  for years i have assumed that love is bloody
  a thing locked up in house and a family tree
  but suddenly its ache goes out beyond me
  and the first love is greater for the new

  this year more than any other
  the winter has savaged my deepest roots
  and the easter sun is banging hard against the window
  the arms of my loves are flowering widely
  and over the fields a new definition is running

  even though the streets we walk cannot be altered
  and faces there are that will not understand
  we have a sun born of our mutual longings
  whose shine is a hard fact - love is a new land

new spartans

  i haven't felt this young for twenty years
  yesterday i felt twenty years older
  then i had the curtains drawn over recluse fears
  today the sun comes in and instantly it's colder

  must shave and get dressed - i'm being nagged
  to shove my suspicions in a corner and get out
  what use the sun if being plagued with new life
  i can't throw off this centrally-heated doubt

  accept people with ice in their brows
  are the new spartans - they wait
      shall i go with them
  indoor delights that slowly breed into lies
  need to be dumped out of doors - and paralysis with them

no leave it
there's still one more
the need now

  the need now is to chronicle new times
  by their own statutes not as ***-ends of the old
  ideas stand out bravely against the surrounding grey
  seeking their own order in what themselves proclaim
  fortresses no longer belong by right to an older day

  i want to gather in my hands things i believe in
  not to be told that other rules prevail - there is
  a treading forward to be done of great excitement
  and people to be found who by the old laws
  should be little more than dead
      this enlightment

  is cutting like spring into a bitter winter
  and there is this smashing of many concrete shells
  a dream with the cheek to be aggressive has assumed
  its own flesh and bone and will not put up with sleep
  as its prime condition - life out of death is exhumed

it's the other side
is so disappointing
no thanks
leave it for now

(ii)

there follows a brief interlude in honour of mr vasko popa
(the yugoslav poet who in a short visit to this country
has stayed a long time)
and it will not now take place

  this game is called x
  no one else can play

  when the game is over
  we have all joined in

  those who have not been playing
  have to give in an ear

  if you don't have an ear
  use one of those lying about

  left over from the last time
  the game wasn't played

  this game is not to do with ears
  shooting must be done from the heart

  x sits in the middle of the ring - he
  has gone for a stroll up his left nostril

  how can he seize a left-over ear
  and drag it under the ground

  hands up if you have been shot from the heart
  x comes up in the middle of himself

  in this way the game is over before
  it began and everyone willy-nilly

  has had to go home
  before he could put a foot outside


(d) enough! – or too much

   reading popa
   i let fly
   too many words

   i bang away
   at the seed
   but can’t break it

   hurt i turn to
   constructing
   castles with cards

   if you can’t split
   the atom
   man stop writing


Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

The Other

 Under my bowels, yellow with smoke,
it waits.
Under my eyes, those milk bunnies,
it waits.
It is waiting.
It is waiting.
Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse.
Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover.
When truth comes spilling out like peas
it hangs up the phone.
When the child is soothed and resting on the breast
it is my other who swallows Lysol.
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet
it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.
My other beats a tin drum in my heart.
My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep.
My other cries and cries and cries
when I put on a cocktail dress.
It cries when I prick a potato.
It cries when I kiss someone hello.
It cries and cries and cries
until I put on a painted mask
and leer at Jesus in His passion.
Then it giggles.
It is a thumbscrew.
Its hatred makes it clairvoyant.
I can only sign over everything,
the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels,
the soul, the family tree, the mailbox.

Then I can sleep.

Maybe.
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Pollys Tree

 A dream tree, Polly's tree:
 a thicket of sticks,
 each speckled twig

ending in a thin-paned
 leaf unlike any
 other on it

or in a ghost flower
 flat as paper and
 of a color

vaporish as frost-breath,
 more finical than
 any silk fan

the Chinese ladies use
 to stir robin's egg
 air. The silver-

haired seed of the milkweed
 comes to roost there, frail
 as the halo

rayed round a candle flame,
 a will-o'-the-wisp
 nimbus, or puff

of cloud-stuff, tipping her
 ***** candelabrum.
 Palely lit by

snuff-ruffed dandelions,
 white daisy wheels and
 a tiger faced

pansy, it glows. O it's
 no family tree,
 Polly's tree, nor

a tree of heaven, though
 it marry quartz-flake,
 feather and rose.

It sprang from her pillow
 whole as a cobweb
 ribbed like a hand,

a dream tree. Polly's tree
 wears a valentine
 arc of tear-pearled

bleeding hearts on its sleeve
 and, crowning it, one
 blue larkspur star.
Written by Craig Raine | Create an image from this poem

In Modern Dress

 A pair of blackbirds
warring in the roses,
one or two poppies

losing their heads,
the trampled lawn
a battlefield of dolls.

Branch by pruned branch,
a child has climbed
the family tree

to queen it over us:
we groundlings search
the flowering cherry

till we find her face,
its pale prerogative
to rule our hearts.

Sir Walter Raleigh
trails his comforter
about the muddy garden,

a full-length Hilliard
in miniature hose
and padded pants.

How rakishly upturned
his fine moustache
of oxtail soup,

foreshadowing, perhaps,
some future time
of altered favour,

stuck in the high chair
like a pillory, features
pelted with food.

So many expeditions
to learn the history
of this little world:

I watch him grub
in the vegetable patch
and ponder the potato

in its natural state
for the very first time,
or found a settlement

of leaves and sticks,
cleverly protected
by a circle of stones.

But where on earth
did he manage to find
that cigarette end?

Rain and wind.
The day disintegrates.
I observe the lengthy

inquisition of a worm
then go indoors to face
a scattered armada

of picture hooks
on the dining room floor,
the remains of a ruff

on my glass of beer, 
Sylvia Plath's Ariel
drowned in the bath.

Washing hair, I kneel
to supervise a second rinse
and act the courtier:

tiny seed pearls,
tingling into sight,
confer a kind of majesty.

And I am author
of this toga'd tribune
on my aproned lap,

who plays his part
to an audience of two,
repeating my words.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Squaw Man

 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched with sunset wine,
And like a silver bubble is the moon.

Cloud-high I climbed but yesterday; a hundred miles around
I looked to see a rival fire a-gleam.
As in a crystal lens it lay, a land without a bound,
All lure, and virgin vastitude, and dream.
The great sky soared exultantly, the great earth bared its breast,
All river-veined and patterned with the pine;
The heedless hordes of caribou were streaming to the West,
A land of lustrous mystery -- and mine.

Yea, mine to frame my Odyssey: Oh, little do they know
My conquest and the kingdom that I keep!
The meadows of the musk-ox, where the laughing grasses grow,
The rivers where the careless conies leap.
Beyond the silent Circle, where white men are fierce and few,
I lord it, and I mock at man-made law;
Like a flame upon the water is my little light canoe,
And yonder in the fireglow is my squaw.

A squaw man! yes, that's what I am; sneer at me if you will.
I've gone the grilling pace that cannot last;
With bawdry, bridge and brandy -- Oh, I've drank enough to kill
A dozen such as you, but that is past.
I've swung round to my senses, found the place where I belong;
The City made a madman out of me;
But here beyond the Circle, where there's neither right or wrong,
I leap from life's straight-jacket, and I'm free.

Yet ever in the far forlorn, by trails of lone desire;
Yet ever in the dawn's white leer of hate;
Yet ever by the dripping kill, beside the drowsy fire,
There comes the fierce heart-hunger for a mate.
There comes the mad blood-clamour for a woman's clinging hand,
Love-humid eyes, the velvet of a breast;
And so I sought the Bonnet-plumes, and chose from out the band
The girl I thought the sweetest and the best.

O wistful women I have loved before my dark disgrace!
O women fair and rare in my home land!
Dear ladies, if I saw you now I'd turn away my face,
Then crawl to kiss your foot-prints in the sand!
And yet -- that day the rifle jammed -- a wounded moose at bay --
A roar, a charge . . . I faced it with my knife:
A shot from out the willow-scrub, and there the monster lay. . . .
Yes, little Laughing Eyes, you saved my life.

The man must have the woman, and we're all brutes more or less,
Since first the male ape shinned the family tree;
And yet I think I love her with a husband's tenderness,
And yet I know that she would die for me.
Oh, if I left you, Laughing Eyes, and nevermore came back,
God help you, girl! I know what you would do. . . .
I see the lake wan in the moon, and from the shadow black,
There drifts a little, empty birch canoe.

We're here beyond the Circle, where there's never wrong nor right;
We aren't spliced according to the law;
But by the gods I hail you on this hushed and holy night
As the mother of my children, and my squaw.
I see your little slender face set in the firelight glow;
I pray that I may never make it sad;
I hear you croon a baby song, all slumber-soft and low --
God bless you, little Laughing Eyes! I'm glad.



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